Companies have created more than 1,000 jobs in the first phase of Burgas's Industrial and Logistics Park. The second phase opened just over a month ago and already has 8 investors, two of them building, says the company's executive director, Petar Ivanov.
Phase 1 sits in the North industrial zone, where the infrastructure is fully in place. It covers about 300 decares, almost 270 of them set aside for industry, and there's no land left for new production. More than 40 companies work there.
Ivanov ran through the mix of businesses: food processing, metal structures, a high-tech plant that machines parts for aircraft engines, an electric-yacht maker, firms making windows, doors and facades, packaging, HVAC systems, cinema and sports seating, and several logistics companies. Foreign investors own the high-tech plant and the seating maker.
Phase 2, in the South-West industrial zone, cost nearly 20 million euros, paid for through the Recovery and Resilience Plan. Around 20 plots have been marked out on about 600 decares, ranging from roughly 10,000 to 75,000 square meters.
The new zone already has streets, parking, lighting, bike lanes, underground utilities, sewage, a sewage pumping station, and both low- and high-voltage power grids. To make the streets last, builders laid them on geotextile, geogrid and geocell layers. Before work began, an engineering-geological survey confirmed the ground could take construction, with a sandy base under the soil.
Investors buy the plots outright, and the contract requires them to meet tight deadlines, create a set number of jobs and invest an agreed sum. Ivanov says this hands them a ready-made site so they can get moving almost right away.
He said construction ran into problems that were hard to avoid, since Burgas sits between three lakes and the sea, and heavy rain slowed the work further. Even so, the deadline — which he called very tight — was met.
Ivanov thinks the city gains more than just the direct economic numbers, because every new business creates extra work in services, supplies, transport, logistics and construction. As Phase 2 fills up, he expects jobs to keep growing.
He listed what makes Burgas attractive to investors: the port, the airport, the direct link to the Trakia motorway and to Sofia, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora, rail transport, and backing from Burgas municipality and the National Company Industrial Zones.
The aim is to draw mainly clean production, since the zone lies close to the Burgas wetlands and the Via Pontica bird migration route runs through it. That's why investors and their businesses are chosen carefully, Ivanov said.
The company was set up in 2012 by Burgas municipality and the National Company Industrial Zones EAD, and its job is to build and grow industrial zones in the municipality.
As for a third phase, Ivanov said it's too early to talk about it. The priority now is filling Phase 2 with investors, and a Phase 3 could come later if the company shifts its focus.